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New lawmakers are stars, briefly

Swearing-in day in recent years has also become somewhat of a family field trip. |
John Shinkle
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Some new members’ families have never been to Washington — including the brothers, Rock and Rob Arnold, of freshman leader Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), who live on the family farm and ranch a few miles apart from each other. Her mother and sister came with the new congresswoman in December to get her basement apartment on Capitol Hill organized.

For the GOP’s first two black members from the Deep South since Reconstruction, the ceremony carries special weight. Incoming freshman leader Tim Scott’s grandfather, who lived in the South during segregation and celebrated with him on election night, will watch his swearing in from Scott’s South Carolina district, while Scott’s mother, brother and sister will attend in person. Incoming Florida Rep. Allen West’s two teenage daughters will be his only guests in the House gallery.

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“He realizes how historic this is, being that he comes from an extremely patriotic family and [grew] up in urban Atlanta,” said Angela Sachitano, West’s communications director. “He is not taking this lightly. This is a historic occasion. He’s enjoying these few days and taking it all in as he can, recognizing how truly lucky he is to be here.”

While incoming House freshmen were already hosting caucus meetings and press conferences, the new class of senators dribbled into Washington on Tuesday evening. The upper chamber’s pace was markedly senatorial, said Missouri Sen.-elect Roy Blunt, a former Republican leader in the House, who quipped that he liked his transition office in the basement of the Dirksen office building.

“By the time I was sworn into the House, I had an office, a committee assignment and a parking spot,” Blunt told POLITICO. “The House works faster than the Senate. But I’m looking forward to the Senate, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

Vice President Joe Biden will administer the oath of office Wednesday afternoon for Blunt, the 12 other new senators and a host of incumbents who won reelection last year — the first of many festivities that day for the incoming class. Biden will also swear in Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk, who won both a special election to serve out the final weeks of the last Congress and a full Senate term in November. Two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Chris Coons of Delaware, were sworn into office in November because they won special elections.

It will be interesting to see how the unqualified teabaggers (pizza makers, eye doctors, real estate moguls etc.) fare on a job where they are expected to be lawyers and law makers. The stupid teabaggers have such a low opinion of Congress that they think anybody can do it. Yes, anybody can just sit around and even vote on a bill, but crafting or modifying one takes knowledge and legistlative skill.

The Republicans, in particular, rely on corporations, lobbyists, their conservative think tanks--Hertiage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, etc., to actually craft bills which they in turn submit. That is what happened when the nation's disasterous energy policy was crafted behind closed doors, excluding environmental groups (oversight), and kept frrom the American public through multiple layers of courts by the corrupt, Bush-Cheney neo-con artists that continued mining deaths and safety violations; pollution abuses including the BP oil well blowout (hundreds of jobs lost); corruption of the Mineral Management Service (oversight); failure to collect oil drilling royalities, litigation protection; corportate subsidies and tax breaks; and dropping of EPA lawsuits and again, oversight.

What the self-serving, narrow-minded, teabaggers will fail to bring to Congress is integrity and an honest effort to clean up influence pedding, campaign finance abuses, "bridge to nowhere" earmarks, massive military industrial congressional complex/no-bid contracts, 435-plus war-profiteers, the exploded top secret industry (1,931 companies, 854,000 government jobs, 265,000 contract jobs costing 30 percent more), etc.. The Democrats have no parallel to the Bush I and II oil wars; GOP K St. Project/partisan lobbyist allegiance, Abramoff/Delay scandals; no parallel to Nixon and their corruption of government; or the imperial Bush-Cheney presidential nightmare; no McCartyisms; no Hoover Great Depression or Bush Great Recession debacles, no corporate-insider SCOTUS--Citizens United judges. Only in America do the poor and working class fight on behalf of the rich and against their own best interests.

how hard is it to represent people. your partisanship blinds you that your precious party has unions and socialist terrorist craft their bills and then they dont even care to see what they put in them before voting on them. they federal government has gotten to big and corrupt. thats both parties and you know it. these politicians need to be knock down a notch because the American people are tired of the games. you are either the narrow mind ignorant one or just intellectually dishonest.